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Steak with Savory Chocolate Sauce

Dating Tip #1- Eat steak together on your first or second date if he/she is not a vegetarian ☺ I once saw on a Korean version of Food Detective that chewing on a steak or eating any kind of red meat dish on a first date enhances the mood and increases the chance of you getting that 2nd and 3rd dates. Well, what will happen if you combine Steak with the ultimate aphrodisiac ingredients – Chocolate and Port Wine? Let’s find out~!

Chocolate Sauce with Steak, really?? That was my first response when I was searching for the perfect Valentine’s day dish (the 4th dish on my Food of Love MusicMenu) and found this recipe. Torn between my curiosity to test out this intriguing recipe for my blog and to cook something special AND edible for my valentine, I decided to give this recipe a go!

I finally found an excuse to use my newly bought awesome grill pan!

Making the Chocolate sauce – Reducing Port Wine and Balsamic Vinegar

Melting Bittersweet Chocolate chunks in the sauce, suddenly the kitchen is filled with sweet aroma

Multi-tasking by grilling Steaks, making the Chocolate Sauce and taking pictures for my blog.

Directions:
1. Brush the steak of your choice with 1 Tbs. of Olive Oil on all sides. Heat up a pan or grill pan with 1 Tbs. of Olive Oil on medium-high heat, right before you sear/grill your steaks, sprinkle generously with Salt and freshly ground Pepper on both sides. When the pan begins to smoke, add the Steaks and cook to your desired degree of doneness. Depending on the size of your Steaks and the strength of your heat, it may take 3.5-4 minutes on each side for a nice medium rare steak!
2. While you cook the Steaks, you can make the sauce. In a small saucepan or pot, melt 2 tsp of butter and stir in the minced Shallot or Onion. Cook for about 1 minute.
3. Pour in the Port Wine and Balsamic Vinegar. Stir until the mixture reduces down to the consistency of syrup. (about 3-4 minutes)
4. Add the Beef Stock and freshly chopped Rosemary to the sauce and bring it back to simmer. After about a minute, whisk in the chopped Bittersweet Chocolate, stir until it melts and slightly thickens the sauce. Salt and Pepper to taste, then add a dash of Tabasco sauce for an optional kick! Sauce is done! Keep warm for service.
5. Right before serving the Steaks, heat it up with little bit of butter then take it off the pan and let it rest in room temperature for about a minute or two so that the juice inside Steaks will be redistributed evenly internally.
6. Pour sauce over Steaks to serve.

Musichef Tip Serve this with roasted veggies. I roasted cut Potatoes, Carrots and whole Garlic cloves tossed in Olive Oil, minced Rosemary, Butter, minced Garlic, seasoned with salt and pepper in 370F oven for 40-50 minutes. You can also grill half an Onion coated with Olive Oil then roast until slightly caramelized.

Musichef Tip # 2 Everyone has different taste preference, alter the above recipe to your liking but I recommend you use Port Wine and Beef Stock for best result! As for Chocolate, use the bittersweet dark kinds with little to no sugar added and no milk powder added. Personally I don’t like things too chocolaty and prefer tangy sauces for my meat, so I only used 1/2 oz. of Chocolate and added a bit more Balsamic Vinegar as well as a dash of Tabasco sauce.

The result? I tasted the final sauce with a piece of steak with excitement and frankly speaking, as much as I enjoyed trying a new, interesting flavor combo, this sauce can be deemed a bit overpowering and sweet for some people. I personally think this sauce goes better with roasted chicken or toasted bread. If you are a chocolate lover however, you would love this recipe!

Having said that…. I have a confession to make… living in Beijing means a lot of the common ingredients that you can usually get in the States are very hard to find or very expensive, plus this week being the Chinese New Year week, many of the shops were closed for the entire week. Therefore, I had to make two sacrificial substitutions – Red Wine with added sugar for Port Wine (oh my garlic! it was $60 – $120 for a bottle!) and water for Beef Stock which I think altered the taste and texture of the final sauce. When I can find an affordable bottle of Port Wine, I Will definitely test it again and report back the result!

Tonight I made a big mistake - sure, the sauce didn’t turn out exactly the way I wanted but it was something else more important. I was too focused on getting the ‘right’ pictures for my blog that I accidentally dripped candle wax on the steak and made the person I was cooking for – Nana wait for long that the steak turned cold…I felt bad. Lesson learned today - serving hot food and enjoying it with loved ones (family and friends) are more important than taking pretty pictures.
I also realized tonight that it’s not so much about the quality of the food (for that you can make reservation at Michelin Starred restaurant) but the quality time you spend with the loved ones cooking together, laughing together through mistakes that is priceless.

I will test this recipe again till I succeed and report back! (2/13/2013)